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Sha Hualing pauses. “Oh, that’s just Mobei-jun. He’s monoquadranted pitch like you freaks are flushed.” She wrinkles her nose. “The North’s only got pitch for fucking, then they mixed up ashen into pale so nobody’s ever actually pacified. Weirdos.”
Liu Mingyan looks like she’s about to start taking notes. Sha Hualing swats one of Liu Mingyan’s ridiculous human foods off the table and basks in the resulting look of disdain.
She’s so fucking good at this. She’s going to have this human gagging for her cock in a matter of days. She’s going to schedule a date and show up several minutes late before hunting down something big and burly to throw Mingyan’s way, something really dangerous to serve as both a snub and a brag.
While Sha Hualing is thinking of suitably dangerous non-edible monsters to kill—she doesn’t want to come off pale, after all—Liu Mingyan starts talking. “And ‘pitch’ is the one where you bite each other, yes?” she seems intrigued in a distinctly ‘wow, look at the exotic demon sex’ way. It’s stupidly hateable.
Liu Mingyan thinks she’s so above Sha Hualing, so above demons, a pristine human cultivator undirtied by the world yet powerful enough to put up a fight, both spoiled and strong enough to avoid literally any traits approaching pitiful. Sha Hualing wants to rub this woman’s face into the mud and then spit in her mouth. Sha Hualing wants to be ground into the mud—feel the humiliation, the spark of anger, the thrill of knowing someone respects her enough to know she can take it, she can endure —and she wants to dish it back tenfold, too, when everything’s said and done.
Liu Mingyan isn’t curious about demons. Liu Mingyan has a demon fetish and an entire literary career centered around catering to other humans with demon fetishes. She’s trying to play at blackrom because she wants research but Sha Hualing is half-certain this spoiled bird of a woman will wuss out at the last second.
Either way, it’s too good to pass up. A spadethrob like this trying to do ‘research?’ One of the few people powerful enough, rich enough, good enough to match her deciding she wants to try at hatemance for the most infuriating reason possible? It’s like something out of a fantasy.
“Yeah,” Sha Hualing says, teeth ground together, “it’s the one where you bite each other.”
“So—”
“No, ball-busting’s not a requirement. Yes, every demon can choose to have a cock or cunt or neither or both. No,” Sha Hualing hisses, “we are not supposed to try to kill our kismesis. You fucking moron. The shit you write isn’t even an unhealthy blackrom, it’s not pitch in the slightest. It's all red as red can be, interspersed with some bland violence and occasional sexual menacing.”
Liu Mingyan’s lips curl in a satisfyingly offended way. “Rude,” she says, filled with all the dignity and disgust a girl could ask for. “Isn’t sexual menacing the entire point of the quadrant?”
Wow. Everything about that was so stupid and wrong it boggles the mind. Sha Hualing’s stomach churns in sheer, baffled disgust. This is the best date she’s ever had. “You’re a dumbass,” she says. “That was literally the worst thing I’ve ever heard and I’ve been privy to hours of Junshang cuddling up to his weird teacher-wife.”
“If it’s so wrong,” Liu Mingyan says, patronizing and impatient, “then why don’t you explain what I got wrong, then? Instead of snarling like a beast.”
“You are the most infuriating person I’ve ever met, the single least redeemable human cultivator I’ve ever had the misfortune to know,” Sha Hualing says in a low, breathless growl, “and a terrible author writing a terrible book who can’t muster a child’s understanding of what a proper relationship looks like. I have never in any of our conversation’s seen a scrap of something that could make you any less annoying and the fact that you don’t even need to try to be a spadethrob yet have no idea what a quadrant is makes me want to gag on my own liver.”
Liu Mingyan looks like she wants to be taking notes again. Horrible, horrible woman. Sha Hualing wants to kiss her so bad. Sha Hualing bets she smells like something stupid and meaningless and frilly.
“Anyway,” Sha Hualing continues, trying to seem like she didn’t just put her whole liver into a hate confession that got summarily ignored, “yeah, Shang Qinghua and Mobei are just weird. Northerners have no fucking idea what romance is and now Mobei’s trying to recreate flushed romance using weird pale-ashen pity and half-assed pitch.”
Liu Mingyan looks like she’s been hit over the head. “And pale is…?”
“What you humans try to do to anything that stays still long enough,” Sha Hualing sneers. It’s not quite right because slutty, slutty human paleness is supposedly platonic and shallow compared to the real thing but insults don’t have to be real to hit hard. “Feeding someone when they can eat on their own, killing their food for them, building a nest. You drag out your weakest feelings and spit them up and then your moirail coddles you about it instead of exploiting the leverage.”
Liu Mingyan wrinkles her nose. “So…like a friend.”
Sha Hualing bares her fangs. “If you want to have one-night piles with your weird soft human friends then you’re free to do that but keep it out of this fucking date. God, you’re so deranged and perverted. Do you cuddle with your friends too? Do you just go around telling your deepest secrets to everyone you know? Do you shove your insecurities at every friend you have, going please soothe me?!”
“Well, I wouldn’t talk about everything with anyone,” Liu Mingyan replies. “But I certainly wouldn’t call it romantic. I’m close enough with Ning-jie to tell her all sorts of things but that doesn’t mean I’m in love with her.”
Oh shit. What the fuck. This is completely depraved. “Don’t tell me about your feelings,” Sha Hualing snarls, “I am absolutely not at the stage where I shore up your weakness, okay, we’ve barely had a single fucking date.”
“Isn’t that a bit pale, Ling-er?”
Sha Hualing lets out a noise of voiceless outrage. Yessss, she thinks, c’mon, needle me more, put a little effort in! It takes two people to make a relationship, a kismesis can’t run on mild curiosity alone! “No,” she growls, “absolutely not. Do you know how many war fables they tell about decades old pitch partners, their spite still running hot, who help each other so they can get back on even ground again? Who drag each other kicking and screaming back to health so they can get back to fighting with someone well enough to fight back? If your partner can’t even tackle you, then you give them the time to get back up. Yeah, sure, snippy wound-tending’s mostly for old married couples but it’s still a thing and if it’s written well then you can see the knives lying in wait and it’s so totally, completely the opposite of pale.”
Liu Mingyan gets that particular note-taking look again. Sha Hualing is officially suspicious, so she looks down at the woman’s hands, looking out for any strange movement…
Yeah. This bitch is writing notes. She’s using some kind of qi-based bullshit to take notes about Sha Hualing’s literary rants. Something is deeply, rottingly wrong with this woman and it makes Sha Hualing want to bite her on those stupid pretty cheeks.
This was the best idea ever, Sha Hualing thinks, lunging forward to beat a lesson into this terrible pretty songbird about when and where it’s appropriate to take notes (hint: NOT when you are in the middle of a fucking date.)